Patent Holders Trying To Drag 3rd Parties Into Patent Disputes

from the troll-expansion dept

If you thought bogus patent lawsuits were crazy now, just wait and see what might happen if a court rules the way two companies are arguing they should. The EFF has filed an amicus brief in two cases in which patent holders are arguing that they can drag third parties into patent lawsuits if those third parties do one part of a claim, while someone else does the rest. If you think about this, and are aware of current patent lawsuits, this is a horrifying prospect. Think Lodsys on steroids, where individual consumers could be sued for patent infringement, merely for making use of what a service provider offers. For example, in one of the two cases, Akamai is claiming patent infringement, and the issue is one claim in the patent. All of the steps of that one claim are handled by a third party... except for "tagging," which is done by users. If Akamai's argument holds, then users of Limelight's services who do "tagging" could be liable for patent infringement without having any idea at all that they're at risk, and without them even violating the vast majority of what's claimed in the patent.

While the patent holders are claiming that without this the patents would be unenforceable, the EFF filing reasonably argues that the problem is that the patents were drafted poorly, and patents should make clear that when they list out a series of steps, those steps are performed by a single party. The arguments by the patent holders would put almost everyone at risk of being directly liable for patent infringement without them realizing it. We see broad patent claims asserted against various internet companies all the time. Imagine if every user of those services could suddenly be sued for infringement as well, just because clicking on a button, adding a tag or whatever, helped "infringe" on the patent in question in combination with the service provider?

As the filing notes, there is simply no social benefit to imposing liability on such third party users. They're hardly in a position to stop the infringement (let alone even know that it's going on). All they're doing is using a service that is offered to them.

Not surprisingly, one of the companies making this argument, McKesson, is using copyright law to back this fundamentally new interpretation of patent law. Specifically, McKesson cites the Supreme Court's terrible Grokster decision on third party liability, and is trying to extend it to patent law. Of course, McKesson does not even properly cite Grokster, falsely claiming that Grokster claims "a defendant's decision to profit from infringement 'while declining to exercise a right to stop or limit it'" makes one liable. That's simply not the Grokster rule at all. Grokster set out a specific set of criteria under which a third party would be liable, but "declining to exercise a right to stop or limit" is not nearly enough.

So are they going to sue Mr. Prior Art?

The Founding Fathers

clearly intended for your friendly neighbor to be judged guilty of patent violation in order to protect that helpless inventor.

This is why the next propaganda film on American Inventors will not feature billion-dollar money men and their courtroom's load of lawyers working overtime and bribing in an effort to crush the protagonist inventor. Instead it will feature ordinary school kids "perhaps in your own backyard" hauled away by federal marshals for assembling a model airplane and other such contraband.

Patent,Trademark, Copyright, License

A 12 year old girl opens a lemonade stand, and uses a picture printed from a Google search of lemonade. The photo shows a bottle of Mike's next to a lemon. The girl sets up her stand, copying the layout from the Sunkist site, and using her parents Iphone, she advertises the stand hours on Craigs List. A sex offender sees the ad and comes by, the parents tell him to move on.
The police come and shut down her stand for not having a license, then discover the Mikes picture and the Craig's list ad and prosecute Mike's Hard Lemonade executives and her parents for child endangerment. It makes the local news. Mike's takes note and her parents are sued for trademark violations. Patent and copyright lawyers from Sunkist subpoena the parents for business process patents and copyright violations.The prosecutor decides that Craig's list should be criminally liable for endangering the 12 year old and goes after them as well, when they discover someone has commented about the 12 year old advertising with her parents account, the user is summoned to court to testify on computer fraud, hacking, and the parents are hauled off to jail. Later the user that commented arrested for contributory negligence. HTC is sued by Apple for no reason. HTC sues HP for no reason.

It's time to address the root of this problem!

The root of this problem, of course, is the lawyers. They all need to be beaten with iron bars, and then hung up in gibbets until the crows peck out their eyes. That should teach them the error of their ways. I'm just here to try and help.

IPew

This reminds me of a lecture I attended titled "Pushing the boundaries of exhaustion", not for the sake of extortion, rather for the appearance of legitimacy in extorting companies to purchase products and support. The mantra went something like this: "let's put the F in FUD" and it dominated boardroom banter.... I witnessed first hand.

Companies like MS, BAS, PS and Oracle (to name a few) began suing each other's enterprise clients for patent infringement. The strategy seemed to work at first then indemnification became standard and so, the usual patent truce locked out innovative startups.

Re: Re: So are they going to sue Mr. Prior Art?

>> It's likely the 10% not in the prior art is the "non-obvious" part or "inventive step".

Right. You focus the lawsuit (and I'm not justifying a patent or the general court procedures) on the person responsible for the inventive step (if anyone can be called out on this) and not on any/all who built up pieces, that likely by themselves are unpatentable.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Patent,Trademark, Copyright, License

Meanwhile, Chinese officials look at all this in open-mouthed amazement. They pause occasionally to shake their heads and smirk at each other. They also make that little hand gesture which means that someone has gone mad.

inducement

There already exists a way to sue 3rd parties -- for "inducement" of patent infringement; in this scenario, the claim steps don't all have to be performed by one party. The difference, however, between this and the situation you explore in your post is that, if I understand it correctly, the so-called "inducing" 3rd party must exercise substantial control over the actions of the main infringer.